Together in Ruin
by StrawberryFunk
Summary: The witch, the knight, the seer, and the heir find each other after the end of the world. (Fantasy/post apocalyptic AU; John/Rose/Dave/Jade).


I.

The witch has found a castle to take shelter in—broken and crumbled and destitute like the rest of the world it's a part of, but a castle nonetheless. Chandeliers have fallen to the ground. The carpets' royal red has faded and their edges are torn and singed. Only a few portraits are left and most of them have fallen from the walls, and any that are not lying face-down on the ground have been cut up and burned beyond recognition. There are places without walls, where bricks have caved in and fallen apart, and at the peak of day, the sun that is left behind thick blankets of smog shines through.

None of that matters; it has been long enough that there is not enough left for the looters to concern themselves with but not so long that it is out of anything to give, and so it is all that Jade needs. She is safe here, and there is even space for spells and potions (just not the materials on most occasions), and for the first time in her life, nobody is here to kill her for trying. It is an unmeasurable improvement compared to the endless wandering she had resigned herself to, and this palace is better put together than any of the demi-buildings and walls of rubble she had nested in before. Even in its ruin, it is beautiful—but then, she has little to compare it to. Years in exile and fear of burning have lowered her standards.

If she goes to the largest, longest hall and closes her eyes when she holds up the hem of her tattered skirt with her fingertips, she can see it all in pristine and hallowed (and ancient) glory as she makes a royal entrance fit for the princesses of storybooks that she knew she could never be.

She travels down the halls today, and pretends that there are loving crowds of people who wait for her behind the doors.

II.

The knight cannot remember the last time he wasn't tired. Just his luck, he thinks (it is all he ever thinks), just his luck that the world would end while there were countless countries between him and home. The apocalypse just couldn't wait until the war was over, or just get it over with before it had the chance to start. No, things had to go to shit with tensions at their highest and the battles at their climax. Well, fuck that.

As soon as it became apparent that the war was over, abandoned in favor of senseless men murdering each other because they no longer knew what else there was for them to do, and that the kingdom was not sending any word, he had left (there were no generals left to call it desertion). And where was he to go?

Dave has no expectations when he finally crosses into his homeland; the years (has it really been years?) have worn them away. He gets exactly what he thought he would in some unfortunate corner in the very back of his mind: there is nothing left. The land has been razed and burned, and he can't even begin to imagine that anything could grow in the decimated fields. Mostly there is rubble scattered across the landscape—bricks and stones and mortar, the remnants of handcrafted homes—but occasionally, there stick out walls and chimneys, although they too have passed the point of habitability. And astoundingly, the castle sticks out on the horizon.

It, too, has suffered irreversible damage—in places it seems as though a giant has come with an equally proportioned spoon and scooped away whole walls and rafters—but it is _there_, and that is enough. That is more than he ever could have hoped for.

Nobody is there. He already knows that nobody is there; nobody is here in this forsaken country, and there is hardly anyone in this world. The castle stands, though, and for some reason, that matters.

Still, he is tired; he cannot remember not being tired, he cannot remember a time where he was not moving. Regardless, he walks still.

III.

The seer has known from the start. She was much too busy being chained up in kingdom dungeons (as those with these sorts of gifts tend to be) to give anyone forewarning, though. Her silence, in a way, feels like the most passive-aggressive jab (to her captors, to her opponents, to the world) that she has ever managed. How _wonderful _it feels to know that maybe millions would have had the chance of survival had she simply given the warning of what she had seen—and when she doubts that, she tells herself to remember that not a single individual in those millions said a word for her or anyone else the kingdoms tied and chained and burned. The woes of being blessed, she thinks bitterly, and has The Old Ones' voices reassure her further.

They keep her just along the edge, too, and hold her back from falling. Most of what Rose does is sleep, as there is little else to do when you are chained by every one of your limbs to brick wall and unable to see past your own blindfold. All of her dreams are visions, but she has stopped trying to put them together. Really, she doesn't need to; she is not leaving here, she will rot here forever under The Noble Circle's care. How they keep her alive is a mystery but she is not so ungrateful as to try and solve it. Complacency describes her state best—perhaps apathy.

When her wrists finally slip through the chains she is baffled. They simply fall through the cuffs on their own accord and she does not even have to twitch. Out of curiosity more than anything, she shifts her ankles and they free themselves flawlessly. For a moment, Rose is left to flex her fingers and remember how her joints move themselves, and then she shakily unties her blindfold. There is an open barred door and stairs beyond it. Her chains have rusted so terribly that they'd simply opened themselves up.

"Oh," she says, and doesn't recall the sound of her voice.

After a silent prayer for strength to The Noble Circle, she tries to stand. The Outer Gods are generous enough to give her that and she surprises herself with how easily she moves. Uncertainly, she steps out of her cell for the first time in—oh, she can hardly remember now; did she even have a life beyond these walls?—and grasps the stair railing.

With no way to go but up, Rose ascends through the castle.

IV.

The heir blames himself, just a little bit. He understands, of course, that he is only a boy, and a boy cannot destroy strains of disease, still earthquakes, summon the rain or stop it when it becomes too much. Still, the kingdom was his (no, it wasn't, he was a child, he had inherited nothing yet) and the people in it were his responsibility (he was but a figurehead, when it comes right down to it; there was no true burden meant to rest on his shoulders), and they were all so unprepared. Why couldn't he do more to help?

There's not much for John to be the heir of now, anyway—he finally returns to what would have been his kingdom after what must have been years of shameful wandering. He has inherited dirt pathways where cobblestones were torn out of the ground by nature's giant hands, piles of debris where people once lived, withered brown wisps that had been plants, half of a castle that had been his a long, long time ago.

His father has been dead for a long, long time. By any birthright, this ruined citadel belongs to him. He thinks that the people would say otherwise if there were any left. Even so, he comes to visit.

V.

And there are three other people standing there when they enter, and nobody knows what to do.

C.

The nights are cold but they have learned how to deal with that, too. They cannot remember how many years it's been (if it's been years at all) since the encounter (and the screaming, and the threats, and a voice that attempted to be diplomatic even though he was just as overwhelmed by the presence of human life), or just how many problems have arisen since, but they have found a way around them all.

Jade still fears the threat of fire; there is no one left to take her away and no one here who questions witchcraft but there are days that she spends locked in a room with a cauldron and a rifle, jumping at every sound (and she doesn't tell them about the burnings she has seen and the friends she has lost). Dave has seen too many men on battlefields and too many instances of madness turning to bloodlust and it is hard to believe that he won't lose them, too, to war and anger and the way his hand still flies to the handle of his sword at any sound he cannot explain (and he still can't believe he's not on a battlefield). Rose is still dazed by human contact; she has lived without it longer than all of them, and there are times she doesn't understand, and there are times she can't hear a word that they say over the screams of The Old Ones, and there are times they find her wishing she could tear out her own eyeballs to stop seeing what she does (and there are times when they will brush her side, hold her hand, hug her as tight as they can, grace her with a kiss, and for a fleeting moment she is blind and deaf and at peace). John is so happy, so lucky to have them, and he is the glue that holds them all together and they all do the same for him (and his nightmares are constant and of losing them, failing them like he did the rest of the kingdom, and as determined as he is to become a better heir for them, he doesn't think he can).

They know, and they have found ways to make things easier. It is all they can do.

At night, they sleep in piles, their hands in each other's, their lips brushing against faces and wrists and other lips, their limbs knotted in an embrace. It's one more problem the four of them have fixed, and the nights aren't so cold.


End file.
